Like a cat
by spiderstan0spiderstan
Summary: When a superhero carries around a bag full of clues to who they are, it's bound to be taken at some point. This entire thing came about because I saw a picture of spider-man with a backpack.


"What great secrets could this shitty backpack hold?" Jan said, the morning sun glinting off her visor. "Avengers tech? Biological evidence? Who knows?"

"What kind of superhero abandons their possessions to fight?" Tanya replied. They were sprinting across the rooftops. Jan was clutching their prize to her chest: A superhero's backpack.

They reached their destination and slipped through the skylight, dropping to the warehouse-which-was-not-a-secret-lab floor. Strip lights glared down from overhead. Jan grinned at her, blue eyes wide as she took off her helmet. Her hair clung with static for a second, ending up at all angles.

"We're gonna get so promoted." She said.

Tanya unzipped the bag, and blinked.

She'd seen Spider-man drop the bag, then picked it up immediately, so it __had__ to be his.

The contents were just… innocuous.

The first item they cataloged was a button-down shirt, plaid, the tag worn to almost illegible. It was a men's medium, the colour faded in a way that looked more natural than manufactured, a button missing near the bottom. It had been awkwardly trapped inside another shirt; Spider-Man had pulled both over his head and left them inside-out.

The second shirt was more distinctive, but __barely__. It was navy, with a simplified illustration of R2-D2. The tags were cut to have rounded corners- to avoid bothering enhanced senses- proclaiming the shirt a size __S,__ to be ironed on the reverse.

The rest of the clothes were equally dull. Bleach-damaged levis, cuffed to a 28 inseam and safety-pinned tighter at the waist. Off-brand running shoes, no socks, and a generic blue hoodie.

"He's kinda tiny, isn't he?" Jan held Spider-Man's R2-D2 shirt up at arm's length, then to her broad chest. "This would be a crop top on me."

"Most clothes are crop tops on you." Tanya was quickly realising that Spider-man didn't carry anything interesting. "I like that. You suit them."

There were textbooks and notebooks, which Tanya thumped out onto the workbench in one smooth movement. A red pencil case full of disorganised stationary, and a blue plastic water bottle. Buried at the bottom was the possible easy out- a wallet.

"Score." Tanya waved it as Jan unstacked the textbooks.

The wallet contained exactly nothing of note. There were a couple bunched-up receipts, a metrocard, three dollars ten in change and half a pack of peppermint gum. Not even a driver's licence.

"Who __doesn't carry I.D__?" Tanya huffed. "Everyone has I.D!"  
He'd probably anticipated the situation, and left whatever he used at home. Stupid smart spider-man, foiling their plan.

"He's taking AP sciences," Jan said, sounding slightly horrified. "And the PSAT. He's in __high school__."

"Good for him! You're in college," Tanya said, rifling through the bottom of the backpack. "Scan the barcodes on his textbooks. That might narrow down his curriculum. And we might be able to match his handwriting, from the notebooks. He might have wrote his name down somewhere, too…"

She unfurled several crumpled receipts. CVS, McDonalds, seven eleven, forbidden planet, officemax. There were a few post-it notes, reminding him to take certain things to school, or wishing him luck. One simply said "SALAD GREENS" in all caps. They were addressed to a variety of nicknames- __pumpkin__ and __Peanut Butter Chip__ sticking out the most.

Someone clearly loved this kid.

"Oh, great, now I'm having __moral qualms__." Jan whined, leaning over to peer at the notes. She was practically pouting."We can't __dart__ someone who gets called __pumpkin__."

"We might not have to dart him." Tanya shrugged. "We could just ask nicely to do some testing. Or threaten to tell his parents. Spider-man is active at two in the morning sometimes. That has got to be past curfew."

That made Jan smile, and making Jan smile was one of Tanya's favourite hobbies.

Even if they had to dart him, ethics existed at least somewhere in the command chain.

Probably.

They went through the notebooks, photographing every page without reading them. Spider-man did a lot of doodling in margins. He kept ahold of pens until they ran out completely- some of the pages were in ink so faded they were barely legible. He wasn't great at english - a lot of crossing out, and one page with the words "SHAKESPEARE MAKES NO SENSE" angrily scratched into the paper.

There was a tatty copy of an old GQ issue, with the Stark: Naked story, and a slightly less old National Geographic on the nine realms.

Jan was rifling through the tupperware/lunchbox when they were rather rudely interrupted.

A blur of red and blue slammed Jan against the wall, and she was webbed there in the space of a second, and __god__ Spider-man moved fast. He was suddenly crouching upside-down on the ceiling, one hand aimed at Tanya's aimed right back with an actual weapon, and they both shot at once.

Tanya found herself being dizzyingly swung through the air towards a wall. She was suddenly yanked in the other direction- to slow her momentum, she realised- and slammed against the wall, blanketed in thick strands of webbing. The side of her face was pressed against the cool tile.

Spider-man pulled the dart roughly out of his shoulder, then tossed it aside. He started cramming his paraphernalia back into his bag.

"You got it in my __hair__!" Tanya heard Jan protest.

Spidey apparently didn't pick up on the innuendo.

"You __stole my backpack__." He said, sounding deeply offended. He clicked the lid back on his tupperware. "And my uncrustable! You deserve it."  
"Aw, did we make you miss your bus?" Tanya asked from her spot on the wall. They hadn't been equipped for a full-on fight, and this was the good ending.

There were so many potential jokes in getting a mouthful of sticky white stuff from an inexperienced teenage boy, Tanya had to stifle a giggle as he webbed her a gag.

"What did she shoot me with?" He asked, turning to Jan. "What does it do?"

"Sedative-hypnotic," She heard Jan say, just out of her field of vision. "Self explanatory. You've got maybe five minutes of consciousness left if you're lucky. And that was a lot for your body mass, so...maybe call your mom? You aren't going to have a good time when you wake up."

"You've got maybe two hours left of being stuck there," Spider-man said. "So maybe call for help, before someone comes and uncovers your whole operation?"

He zipped up his backpack, shrugged it on, and took one step onto the wall.

He paused. He clicked the chest-clip on his backpack shut, and scrambled up the wall and through the skylight. The way he moved would have been creepy, if not for the giant backpack. He reminded Tanya of a kid pretending to be a turtle.

"He does know we have _ _digital records__ , right?" Jan asked. Tanya had just the range of motion to shrug. "Oh yeah, you're being quiet for once."

Tanya glared.

They still had important information, though. Vital clues to Spider-Man's identity.

A little data processing, a little cross referencing, and his secret would be out of the bag.


End file.
